Most of us feel naked without our iPhone or Android phone. And more and more of us are having that same attachment to our iPads (if you can get it out of your kids hands). We use them for everything from a cooking timer to making dinner reservations. Now the newest cooking apps are making it tempting to ditch the cookbook in favor of the digital device.

The latest apps are filled with video instructions, verbal and visual cues, graphic flow charts, images of all the equipment and ingredients — the kind of design and photography that is too costly when you're publishing a run of 30,000 books, but easy enough to produce for a hand-held device.

While you wouldn't lug a cookbook to the supermarket, you might write down the ingredients needed on a scrap of paper. But with the portable smartphones and tablets you can look up recipe ideas while strolling the aisles and have all the ingredients at your fingertips — literally.

Then again, smearing your touchscreen with flour fingerprints is no big deal, but liquids will destroy the tablet or smartphone. And with the classic cookbook, you don't have to check the "favorite" box to know that it's a keeper; just put it on your shelf.

Posted by Kiri Tannenbaum

Kiri Tannenbaum is a contributing editor at Delish. Her love of food was sparked by an extended stay in Florence, Italy, where she assisted in the kitchen, shaving bittersweet chocolate over creamy, homemade tiramisu. Though she has no Italian blood in her lineage, Kiri always makes her sauce from scratch and hopes one day to adopt an Italian grandmother. Read More

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